He heard the soldier make the sign of the cross and murmur, ‘Amen,’ meaning ‘truly’ in ancient Hebrew. Orsini felt the subtle nudge of his intuition. Was the Blessed Mother showing him a sign?
Once the door shut behind him, Orsini waited for the gentle voice of his Sovereign Pontiff to ask him to come forward. He walked with his head lowered respectfully and once he came into the candlelight, he knelt down on his left knee and kissed the Holy ring on the Pope’s right hand. Pius VII lay on a poor mattress thrown up against a stone wall with two meager blankets to cover his body. No fire warmed the grate. The room was miserable in every way and the Pontiff lay quiet and still.
Three days before, Napoleon had ordered the already dangerously ill Pontiff to be removed from his prison confinement at Savona, Italy, and be brought across the Alps and to Fontainebleau south of Paris. The trip was five hundred miles over rough landscape and the sick Pope was in incredible physical pain. His body was shutting down from the forced morphine sedatives given to him by one of Napoleon’s quack doctors who accompanied the Pontiff in his coach. They refused Pius any rest during the day and on more than one occasion his pain was so excruciating he passed out. Practically a corpse, Pius had endured so far, but time was running out and it was because of this that Orsini had ridden night and day to reach him at Novalesa Abbey, high in the Alps between France and Italy.
“Holy Father,” Orsini whispered. He crouched down to speak as softly as possible so the guard would not be able to hear their conversation. “I’ve brought you news of the removal of the Vatican’s library. Bonaparte’s soldiers have filled many carts and will begin their journey in the next week. The documents you were most concerned with, I will travel with and never let them from my sight. They’ve been well packed and put in the best crates. I have begged to be allowed to personally accompany these to Paris.”
Pius’ eyes moved beneath his closed lids. For a brief moment a spasm of his facial muscles told Orsini that he was suffering. Both men waited for the agony to pass and Pius spoke.
“You have done more than I could hope. When you get to Paris, find the Leonardo manuscripts taken from the Ambrosian Library in Milan and make sure to secure them. Travel with and watch over the Urbino Bible, the works of Virgil and the papyri by the disciples of Peter. Become close to Pierre Daunou, the head archivist. He despises the Church, but he will do his best to protect these precious things.”
Pius drew breath and was quiet for a long time. It was vital, Orsini knew, that these things were kept safe at any cost. He waited, head down, studying the Pontiff as the invalid rested. In his mind he prayed for healing and God’s protection for the gentle, unshakable man beside him. When he finally spoke, Orsini heard the sheer strength of will still in the man’s voice.
“We’ve tried to hide these things but Gaetano Marini, our servant, was found out and had to retrieve them for Daunou. It’s no use. Our only hope is to trust Daunou to be a careful curator.”
Orsini nodded. The cruel and despicable way His Holiness was being treated sickened Orsini’s heart. He and the other ecclesiastics knew of the forced sedatives and guessed that these were the cause of Pius’ quick decline. The cruelty of the trip, not giving the Pontiff the simplest of care or even respect, and never allowing him real medical assistance was in everyone’s eyes an attempt by Napoleon to rid himself of the one man in Europe who had stood his ground and wasn’t backing down. At every stop of the Pontiff’s coach, the people who’d lined up to receive a blessing were dispersed by the soldiers and told to honor Napoleon and not a treasonistic priest.
“Holy Father, you are sick. What can I do?” Orsini asked.
“Pray for God’s forgiveness of Napoleon, as will I. Go with peace and come to Fontainebleau when you are able. I want to know if these items made it and are safe. They are works divinely inspired and are man’s holy heritage. No one man has a right to them. They must be preserved for all. Mark my word, Napoleon will fall and when he does, the jackals from all over Europe will descend on Paris and strip it of the riches brought to its doors by the Corsican.”
The two men prayed together for God’s blessing on their endeavors, then Orsini kissed the Pontiff’s holy ring and departed the room. The guard on the landing stepped forward to hinder his passing. Pity and concern were in the soldier’s eyes.
“Is His Holiness… well this morning?” he asked cautiously.
Orsini read the thoughts behind the words. Was this an answer possibly to his prayer at the chapel of Mary and at Pius’ bedside? Had someone been sent for him to trust? He would try.
“His Holiness is gravely ill. He will die, if he’s not given better treatment. I wouldn’t want to be the man responsible for the cruel death of God’s chosen leader on Earth.”
The guard blanched and swallowed hard. Here was a soldier who’d no doubt killed many men in the field of war and had seen every kind of atrocity inflicted on innocent life, but the thought of being the willing butcher of the Vicar of Christ was a sacrilege even he wasn’t willing to assume upon his conscience.
Orsini reached into the pocket of his cassock and handed the guard a small, silk bag. The soldier opened the purse and looked taken aback. Inside were at least ten scudi, or Italian coins. His gaze flicked down the spiral stairs to his right. Orsini knew the soldier was terrified of being caught taking a bribe from a priest.
“What do you want from me?” he asked in a low, worried whisper.
“I want there to be no more forced drugs given to His Holiness and he’s to be allowed a fire in his rooms at night. The food should be hearty broth and some bread, until he’s better. Do this and I will see that you will receive another such recompense at each stop along the way. He must have rest stops and one of his own companions with him.”
The soldier nodded with gusto. He had more in the pouch of coins given to him by Orsini than he would see for six months of pay from Napoleon’s army.
From that day forward, the quack doctor assigned to the Pontiff was unable to find his satchel containing the sedatives and, though the trip to Fontainebleau was brutal, the Pontiff arrived alive. But for the effort of Orsini, he would have easily died.
Napoleon was annoyed no doubt, but it would be Pius VII who would outlast the Emperor of the French and take back the Papal spiritual and territorial domains. In the end, it was Pius who requested that Napoleon receive descent treatment in the prison at Elba and provided a safe home for the dethroned Emperor’s mother, brothers and uncle.
As for the task assigned to Orsini regarding the precious manuscripts, bibles and papers, he worked alongside Pierre Daunou, the chief curator for the intended Bibliothèque nationale de France, and was true to his word giving the highest measure of protection to the irreplaceable artifacts of human knowledge.
It was what happened after Napoleon’s lost his empire in 1815, and when unscrupulous men realized how vulnerable the libraries of France were that the greatest losses regarding the written history of humanity really began. Not since the fires by the Romans at the library of Carthage in northern Africa and later at Alexandria has so much human knowledge been lost.
Of course, other megalomaniacs bent on world domination would come down history’s bloody road to take from the French what they’d stripped from the Italians. It’s an old story: What goes around comes around, and unfortunately for the human race, it happens all to often.
Chapter 4
Healy House
Present Day
Helen Ryes was the happiest she’d been in years. She sat in a comfortable lawn chair under one of Healy House’s ancient oak trees and languidly watched the two men brandishing their tennis rackets in an effort to win the set. They’d been enjoying the battle for the last hour and there was no sign of slowing down. Her eyes followed the movements of the taller of the two men. Like a schoolgirl, she was deeply in love with him and felt the tug of love’s undertow every time their eyes met.
Piers, her fiancé and only a few years older than Helen
, was in excellent shape for a man of fifty. He was playing a cutthroat game of tennis with Alistair Turner, an elegant, athletic-type who’s forehand was an opponent's worst nightmare. A pleasurable sound came from the ball as it hit their racket’s sweet spot with force and whizzed across the top of the net to make contact with the clay of the court.
Helen shut her eyes for a moment and felt the warm breeze play with her short auburn hair. The afternoon air was divine. Soft and fragrant from the first blooming of the native wild roses only a few feet from where she sat; it whipped about her calves teasingly, causing her white pleated skirt to flutter around her ankles. With the hum of springtime filling the countryside, her peaceful mind took its time separating out the different songs of the birds courting their mates and building their nests. A magpie somewhere in the hedges down by the gate fussed, catching her attention.
Something needled at her brain. Trying to remember an old poem about a magpie, she lost herself in the mental digging it required to find the thread of the rhyme. The combatants before her grunted and groaned as they swung their rackets beating out a rhythm, aiding Helen’s mind to unearth the buried verse.
“One for sorrow, two for mirth,
Three for a wedding…”
One stanza was all she remembered. Why go further? It was as if the magpie’s timing was perfect. Opening her eyes, she smiled at the coincidence: a magpie of all birds, and she with a wedding in only ten days. There in front of her was Piers, his strong back twisted at his hips and his racket poised behind him. He rotated as the tennis ball came cross-court and with exquisite timing he sent it hissing back towards Alistair.
Helen’s bliss was complete. She was getting married to a man who made her heart sing every time she looked at him. In fact, as she watched him smash the tennis ball again at Alistair, she actually found herself even more attracted to him than she thought humanly possible.
Normally, Piers was the quintessential English gentleman. Gorgeous blue eyes, dark hair and a slim physique, but on the tennis court he became a warrior. As she watched him take command of the point, she wished he would turn around and give her one of his brilliant smiles. As if they shared a perfect awareness of each other’s desires, Piers took the point and immediately turned to where she sat.
“Did you see that, darling? Poor Alistair is down forty-love!” he said with joy in his voice and blew her a kiss. “You’re lucky for me, Helen. Don’t wander off!”
“Never,” she said back.
The two players resumed the game. It was Alistair’s serve, and his topspin was lethal. Piers returned it beautifully to Alistair’s baseline left corner. The players’ intense focus was honed to a high-pitched tension, with both men using every fiber of their mental and physical strengths to win the point. It was Piers, though, who took his eye off the ball for an infinitesimal second as the same magpie Helen had heard earlier darted in a direct line across the court and landed on the slender wire of the net’s rim. Piers’ shot went long and the point was lost.
“What in the devil is that bird doing?” Alistair called, sliding to a stop and sending particles of clay puffing up around his legs.
“A magpie on the court? I’ve never seen a bird do that. Have you?” Piers asked, looking from Helen to Alistair.
“It’s almost as if he did it on purpose, wouldn’t you say?” Alistair returned. “Good thing your shot didn’t hit him. Bad luck, if I remember my childhood nursery rhymes correctly.”
“One about a magpie?” Piers asked.
Alistair finished in his crisp English accent the poem Helen was having difficulty remembering only moments earlier.
“One for sorrow, two for mirth,
Three for a wedding, four for a birth,
Five for silver, six for gold,
Seven for a secret not to be told.
Eight for a wish, nine for a kiss;
Ten for a bird that's best to miss.”
Helen felt a shiver run down her back and along her arms. The warm breeze took on a chill. Her earlier happiness was muted by some feeling of unease brought on by the magpie’s odd maneuver and Alistair’s quick remembrance of the poem’s entirety.
Down from the house’s back entryway came their newest addition to staff, Mr. Tidwell, the butler-manservant Piers had hired to help him handle the day-to-day running of the estate. He was carrying a piece of paper in his hand and all three people watched his approach with a quiet curiosity.
As Tidwell reached the court’s outer limits, he turned to Helen saying, “Mrs. Ryes, you have a visitor requesting entry at Healy’s main gate. A Mr. George Ryes is here.”
Alistair and Piers turned to look at Helen who sat motionless in her chair. The magpie, his work complete, called farewell and fluttered back up into the air soon passing out of sight over the tall hedges.
As if she were the Lady of Shalott hearing the first cringing squeaks of her looking glass beginning to fracture, Helen sought the comfort of Piers’ gaze. The mere mention of her ex-husband’s name made her feel she was being tossed about in a boat at sea, searching frantically for the horizon to give her a sense of steadiness and solidity.
Piers smiled at her reassuringly and walked over to where she sat. Bending down, he took one of her hands in one of his and with the other lifted her chin then kissed her softly.
“What do you say, Helen? Should we let George in for a visit? What harm could it do?” he asked.
There it was. The obvious question posed in response to the earlier winged harbinger of possible misfortune. Her heart tore as she spoke the opposite of what she felt.
“Nothing,” she said, finally finding her voice. “He can do no harm at all.”
Saying isn’t believing sometimes, and Helen knew she was a fraud the minute the words left her lips.
Suspecting nothing of her guile, Piers pulled her to a standing position and wrapped her in his arms, kissing her fully on the mouth. Her mind swirled with confusion, longing and, in the background, the shadow of fear.
Taking her firmly by the shoulders, he said, “You’re mine and nothing or no one will stop us from being together. Come. Let’s go see what George wants.”
Collecting their things, they climbed the broad flagstone steps leading up from the courts and to the rear courtyard. Tidwell communicated by a cell phone with the security man at the main gates to allow the visitor to continue up the drive towards the house.
Walking like she was in a dream or was it a nightmare, Helen wouldn’t know which it was until the reason for George’s visit was clear. Why had he come all this way without a call first? But then George never played fair, never let anyone get the drop on him.
Gripping Piers’ hand tighter, she walked through the garden gate listening to Alistair and Piers rehash their tennis game with gusto. The men, oblivious to the possibility of something low sneaking and slithering towards them, didn’t notice Helen’s shift in mood. Like most women, her instincts, when she listened to them, never played her wrong.
One thing was for sure, George was on his way. He was trying to breach her happiness and the gates of Healy had been flung open to him. Helen and Piers were about to learn what the magpie already knew.
Chapter 5
Paris, France 1848
“The fame of the rich man dies with him; the fame of the treasure, and not of the man who possessed it, remains.”
-Leonardo da Vinci
Count Guglielmo Libri, a brilliant mathematician and talented illegal purveyor of highly valuable rare books and manuscripts, sat thinking in his favorite leather bergère chair on a warm Parisian evening in June. He was contemplating his next move. The long windows to his first story apartment were open to allow for a fresh breeze to purge the room from any humidity that may have built up from the heat of the day.
Below in the streets of Paris, crowds were beginning to congregate and grow contentious. Working people were frustrated once again with the current state of France’s political and economic situation. Like the earl
y rumblings of an approaching thunderstorm, the lower classes were hot with desire to purge the political atmosphere and tear down another regime. Riots would soon burst forth down the avenues, wreaking acts of ferocity upon the city and leaving a wake of destruction in their path.
Nothing in Libri’s demeanor, however, indicated he was interested whatsoever in the clamor of the wailing proletariat. Experience told him that revolution begat a mismatched brood of human eventualities: horrific crimes upon the least guilty, grasping for the choicest political morsels by those with the least integrity, and a crippled opportunity for the lowest in society to improve their lot in life. The only thing he had in common with the masses of people building barricades along Paris’ main avenues was that he too understood the power of taking what you want.
His gaze caressed the countless books and manuscripts neatly resting on the elegant mahogany shelves that reached nearly to the ceiling of his extensive library. For a long while, Libri’s countenance expressed the inner thoughts of a man deeply pleased and contented with his unmatched accomplishment in acquiring such a collection. But the impending upheaval about to explode in the streets below was forcing him to grapple mentally with the puzzle of safely squirreling away these precious volumes from the affronted and pressing rightful owners, the illustrious libraries of Paris.
If anyone was up to the challenge of strategizing the perfect plan of egress from France, it was Count Guglielmo Libri. He’d achieved starry heights professionally throughout his life due to his mental agility. At only twenty, he was appointed professor of mathematical physics at Pisa and by thirty he was a professor of calculus at the Collège de France. Even the Légion d’honneur was given to him by the Académie des sciences. Nothing escaped his grasp either intellectually or tangibly.
Case in point, there were over forty-thousand extremely rare books and eighteen hundred equally valuable manuscripts coexisting peacefully in his temple of the priceless and the wrongfully displaced. Everything from works by Galileo, Copernicus, to Leibniz graced his shelves, and he had Napoleon to thank in part for the ease with which he’d amassed his collection.
Death Drinks Darjeeling (A Helen and Martha Cozy Mystery Book 4) Page 2
